Bearding the tit in his den

When I first arrived at St Aidan's RSPB reserve, I was intrigued to see a group of birders with binoculars and massive camera lenses, all peering into the scrubby fringe of the pool nearest to the small visitor centre. Of course, I wandered over to see what was going on...

As soon as I got there, I saw a little brown and grey bird hopping around, disappearing into the vegetation and then popping out again somewhere else:

It proved, oddly enough, to be a bearded tit. I've never seen one before and they are usually secretive little birds, living deep in the reedbeds and usually spotted flying over, making a kind of pinging call, or sometimes clinging to a reed. This one was behaving more like a sparrow, hopping around and quite unfazed by the crowd of eager photographers tracking it up and down the shoreline.

My lens is nowhere near long enough for bird photography, so it wasn't easy to get a shot and I didn't want to get in the way of the 'pros'. I set my camera to what I thought might work ( ! - not an expert at this type of photo) and fired off a few shots when the bird revealed itself for a few seconds. These photos are heavily cropped, so the quality is poor but I was still very pleased to see this little charmer. 

Apart from that exciting 'spot' I didn't see anything else unusual, though I heard a bittern booming. There are supposed to be black-necked grebes on the reserve but I couldn't see them in the areas I explored. The birds I saw were all the common ones: mute swans, mallard, moorhens and coots, teal, great crested grebes, cormorant, reed bunting, magpie, great and blue tits, black-headed gulls, terns, tufted ducks and the pretty gadwall (below).